Ben Affleck Reflects on Jennifer Lopez Divorce: “Somebody I Have a Lot of Respect For”

Ben Affleck is reflecting on his divorce from Jennifer Lopez.

In his GQ cover story published Tuesday, the Accountant 2 star was asked about participating in Lopez’s documentary, Greatest Love Story Never Told, in which Lopez opens up about her personal journey that led to her latest album, which included her reconciliation and marriage to Affleck 20 years after they were first together and engaged.

Having already been candid about his preference for privacy, Affleck explained his thoughts on participating in the doc that streamed on Prime.

“Part of it was, ‘Okay, if I’m going to participate in this, I want to try to do it in an honest way and in a way that’s interesting.’ Because I thought it was an interesting examination,” he said. “Like I mentioned to you before, there are a lot of people who I think have handled celebrity more adeptly and more adroitly than I have, Jennifer among them. My temperament is to be a little bit more reserved and private than hers. As happens in relationships, you don’t always have the same attitude towards these things.”

He continued, “And so I thought, ‘Oh, this is interesting because how do you reconcile that?’ Because exactly what you said is true. I love and support this person. I believe in them. They’re great. I want people to see that. And I think the thing that I said in that documentary or the piece that they used was where I said, You don’t marry a ship captain and then say, ‘Well, I don’t like going out in the water.’ You’ve got to own what you knew going into any relationship.”

Affleck reiterated “that wasn’t the cause of some major fracture. It’s not like you can watch that documentary and go, ‘Oh, now I understand the issues that these two had.’”

In a follow-up conversation, Affleck stressed that he hoped he was clear about his thoughts and feelings and didn’t mind opening up “as long as my actual feelings and intentions and beliefs are communicated.

“I hope I was clear that really this is somebody I have a lot of respect for. And I get wanting to divine or explore the kind of differences in perspective that we have in terms of how a person feels comfortable approaching the line between public and private life. But I really hope that whatever you use doesn’t suggest that I have any negativity or judgment or anything regarding that. I have nothing but respect,” he said.

He noted that being in the public eye, “there’s a tendency to look at breakups and want to identify root causes or something,” but when it comes to their relationship, “the truth is much more quotidian than probably people would believe or would be interesting.

“There’s no scandal, no soap opera, no intrigue,” he further explained. “The truth is, when you talk to somebody, ‘Hey, what happened?’ Well, there is no: ‘This is what happened.’ It’s just a story about people trying to figure out their lives and relationships in ways that we all sort of normally do. And as you get older, this is true for me, I assume it’s true for most people, there is no ‘So-and-so did this’ or ‘This was the big event.’ It’s really, it sounds more like a couple’s therapy session, which — you would tune out of someone else’s couple’s therapy after a while. For one thing, you start going, ‘Okay, clearly this person has got these issues. Clearly they have these issues.’ And the reason I don’t want to share that is just sort of embarrassing. It feels vulnerable.”

Lopez and Affleck starred in both Gigli (2003) and Jersey Girl (2004) together, and were previously engaged in November 2002 following a highly publicized relationship during the early 2000s. They called off their engagement less than two years later.

However, in 2022 the couple announced that they were engaged after reconciling in April 2021. Prior to their nuptials in Georgia, Lopez and Affleck had eloped in Las Vegas, a spontaneous decision that derived from the stress of wedding planning.

I don’t know if you know this, but 20 years ago we were supposed to get married and it kind of all fell apart back then,” Lopez explained during a visit to Jimmy Kimmel Live! at the time. “And this time, we still — I absolutely did — had a little PTSD. And so I was like, ‘Is this really happening?’”

Per People, when Lopez filed for divorce, she listed the date of separation as April 26, 2024, though she filed on Aug. 20, the second anniversary of their ceremony in Georgia.

When Lopez covered the special fall anniversary issue of Interview last year, she recapped her year stating: “It was like my whole fucking world exploded. I think what I love about life, that there’s no arrival point. There’s only getting better and growing if you want to. It’s either growing or dying, and I don’t want to do the dying part. And yeah, there’s times when I thought I figured it out, and then life goes, ‘Let’s send you another thing and see if you fall for it. Let’s see if you really have learned that lesson.’ And I hadn’t. I understand that now in a much deeper way, which doesn’t mean that I won’t make mistakes in the future, but again, when your whole house blows up, you’re standing there in the rubble going, ‘How do I not ever let that happen again?’”